by Kim Newman
Winthrop excused himself and got up, reaching for stirrups fixed to the timbers for Albert Ball.
'I need air,'he said.
It was March the 20th, official spring. In France, the weather was wintery. Winthrop stood outside the farmhouse, breathing cold air, concentrating. He still needed his vampire blood. The sense of purpose filled him again. But he was ailing. Every time he tried mentally to get above himself, to sort out Ball and Kate and the rest of it, he was paralysed. His mind was shrinking, intent merely on survival and murder. There was more, but a red mist hung over it. What separated him from the troglodytes? Or from old killers impressed into uniform?
Two orderlies struggled through the kitchen door, a long bundle between them. Winthrop smelled blood. The men carried Cigarette, drained unconscious. They left the girl in a lump against a fence by her bicycle.
Winthrop went over to see. The orderlies withdrew, wiping their hands as if they had disposed of something messy. The girl's shawl was wrapped about her. Banknotes rolled into a cigarette-like tube were tucked into her bosom. A spatter of rain, like tears, brushed Cigarette's face. Red-rimmed eyes sprang open. She reached for the money and pushed it deeper into her bodice.
He made no motion to help her. She would not thank him.
With experienced fingers, Cigarette felt the bites on her throat and bosom, wincing as she probed ragged tears. She wrapped her shawl about her throat like a field dressing. The wool was spotted with old bleeding. She got deliberately to her feet, strangely dignified, like a drunkard doing his best to seem sober. She held the fence with one hand until she steadied. Her contemptuous gaze took in Winthrop, the farmhouse and the airfield. She was not squealing and giggling now. This girl could not hate the Boche more than she hated the Allied pilots who bled her for money.
He tasted blood in the rain.
Cigarette mounted her bicycle and pedalled off, leaning low over her handlebars, skirts tucked away out of the spokes. Did she have a family to feed? A husband? Children? Or was she a camp-follower, going wherever there were soldiers?
His sudden concern for the girl troubled him, then he realised it was the Kate in him. The rain washed it away. Only a fool stood outside in the rain when he didn't have to.
At sunset, Allard called a briefing. Winthrop knew at once that it was a serious matter. The board with details of the squadron's disposition was wiped clean. A large-scale map of the region hung from the wall. And Mr Croft sat by the captain, face unreadable.
Winthrop sat in Ball's chair, near Bertie and Ginger.
'Mr Croft would like to talk with you,' Allard said.
This was unusual. Winthrop could not recall the intelligence man actually saying a word.
Croft stood, bowing slightly to the room, and began, Gentlemen, conflicts of which you were not aware are taking place. A secret war, if you will. We have gulled the enemy. We have allowed him his knights of the air. We have helped build up the legends of men like Richthofen, have encouraged the enemy to trust in them, to prize them above their worth. It has been costly, but - as you will soon understand - a vital strategy.'
As Croft rasped, Winthrop burned. It was impossible to like this man. What he seemed to be suggesting was dreadful, that the Allies sacrificed good men like Albert Ball and Tom Cundall simply to lull the Boche into overvaluing their shape-shifting killers.
'You know that JG1 are stationed in Schloss Adler. On your last patrol, you brought back intelligence that a Zeppelin was moored above the castle.'
A great fuss had been made of that tid-bit.
'It is unusual for such machines to venture near the front. This is the flagship of the enemy's aerial fleet, the Attila. It is the position from which their commander-in-chief will observe their planned offensive.'
Winthrop remembered the black bulk of the thing.
'Are you saying Dracula's in that Zep?' Lacey asked.
Croft, annoyed to be questioned, continued. 'This is the endgame we have been manoeuvring. We have drawn Dracula out of his lair. We have brought him within our reach.'
Winthrop understood what Allard had meant by 'greater prey'. There were eagles in the sky, almost as common as sparrows. But there was also a dragon, the dracul.
'When the attack comes, it will be the purpose of this squadron to bring down the Zeppelin. Once the head has been cut off the beast, the body will wither. This single stroke will mean victory.'
'All very well, old thing,' said Algy, 'but we've nothing that can climb as high as a jolly Zep. One's eyes turn to iceballs in the upper climes.'
'He will come down to us. Lord Ruthven understands his arrogance. The Graf von Dracula loves this toy, this flying machine. He will want to be close enough to see his armies sweep across the lines. He feels secure in his guards, his shape- shifter aces. That childish overreaching will be the end of him. You men will assassinate Dracula.'
'I've always fancied a spot of Zep-busting,' Bertie said. 'Damned unsporting things, the Zeps. Bombing civilians and that sort of show.'
'This is not sport,' Croft said. 'This is war. In this instance, this is murder. Make no mistake.' 'What about dear old JG1?'
'Kill them if you must and if you can, but do not pursue any private campaign against them. The priority is the Zeppelin and Graf von Dracula.'
'Once Dracula's killed, will it be over?'
'This is his war. Without him, the Central Powers will collapse.'
'Without Dracula, who'll there be to surrender?'
Croft shrugged. 'There will still be the Kaiser. Without Dracula, he will be a lost child.'
Ruthven's man was convincing but his voice was hollow, his focus narrow. Croft said this was not sport but talked of endgames as if a continent of mud were a chess-board. From the air, in the air, Winthrop knew there was no order. Without its head, the beast might thrash until nothing was left alive in the jungle. All Europe might become a country of troglodytes. Winthrop could not think of that. He could think only of hunting hunters, of stalking eagles and dragons.
The telephone rang and was in Allard's hand. The captain listened, nodded, and hung up.
'It has begun,' he announced.
41
Kaiserschlacht
She could not breathe. Of course, breathing was a habit, not a necessity. Her chest was under something hard and heavy. All feeling was whipped out of her limbs. Jagged pain in her shoulder suggested silver.
Kate blinked in the dark. Her glasses, jammed to her face, kept dirt out of her eyes. Since turning, which had brought the vampire power of night sight, she had not known blackness so total. The silence of the grave was eaten by tiny, distant sounds. Screams, explosions, engines, single shots, machine guns.
She had been dead for years. Her condition was not changed.
A pain rushed through her shoulder, down her right arm to her hand. She made a clawed fist, digging her nails into the meat of her palm. It was hard to punch earth. She had no leverage. Her whole arm strained. Her injured shoulder wrenched. She had to press her lips tightly together to swallow the shriek that wanted to escape.
There was a crack in her coffin of earth and her arm could move. Her fingers scrabbled filth as she reached upwards. She jammed her claws into a dead man and had to reach round him. Holding the corpse's arm, bearing the pain, she pulled hard, trying to shift her whole body upwards. The bar across her chest wouldn't budge.
If she fell into her lassitude now, she might live insensible through years, centuries. Perhaps she would awake into a Utopia where mankind had outgrown war. Or perhaps she'd find Dracula absolute ruler of a desolate Earth. To sleep was to desert. Her responsibility was to the present.
Her fist burst through to the surface. She felt air on her hand and stretched out her fingers.
The thing on her chest was a beam, or maybe a heavy chunk of her ambulance. It was deeply embedded in the earth. She tried pressing herself down deeper, hoping to wriggle loose and burrow up like a worm.
If only her father could see her n
ow.
Writhing her shoulders, she displaced soft earth beneath her. Everything was wet. Enough struggling turned packed-down dirt into moveable mud.
Someone took hold of her hand and gripped tight. She grasped a man's hand, trying to retract her nails so as not to pierce her rescuer. She tried to imagine the man. Hot pain came in her palm as a metal point - not silver - was forced through the skin into the flesh. Her saviour was shoving a bayonet into her. An eager mouth, tongue like a cat's, lapped blood from her hand, sucking greedily.
She grabbed a face, feeling a moustache, and tried to latch on to a skull with her nails. As the man who was stealing her blood stood, she was pulled through earth. The barrier scraped across her chest and hips. Then she was stuck again. Her shoulder burned. She thought her arm would be wrenched off. Then her face was out of the dirt and she was screaming.
Her glasses, miraculously unbroken, were smeared with earth, and the sun had set. But the light seemed intense. Her eyes stung. And she was assaulted by incredible din.
She stood up, still grasping the scavenger, and shook, trying to get the dirt-clumps off her clothes. Layers of earth between layers of clothes formed three or four skins of cold mud.
She let go of her captive. Her hand was enlarged and knobbly, meat stretched over a swollen skeleton. Her fingers had shot out, stretched to six-inch twigs with three-inch blades. As she thought about it, her hand dwindled. A deep-buried shape- shifting power had come with direst need.
If the new-born soldier staring at her had worn a German uniform, she would have killed him and eaten his heart. But he was a maddened Tommy, bleeding in a dozen places, her blood on his mouth. The soldier backed away and darted off, leaving Kate alone on a mound of mud. She was still enraged, fighting off the red thirst that came with this carnage.
As her eyes recovered, she distinguished pieces of her ambulance and the former trench-shorings. Dead men, smashed to pieces, lay all about. Mercifully, none was recognisable. She assumed Tietjens and Bartlett must be among them. There was no trench any more. Explosions had filled it in. She stood on the restored ground level, exposed. She saw the ditch-lines of nearby trenches. Most of the system was still intact. Men swarmed through, rushing to and away from the front.
A fragment worked its way out of her shoulder and she plucked it free. The pain was already fading.
There were explosions all around. Still ringing from the one that had nearly killed her, she was not further shocked. Turning, she looked to the front. Though her position was foolishly dangerous, she had a remarkable view. From her mound, she saw the busy line of the Allied trenches, the wire tangles of No Man's Land, and the puffs of the German guns. She even saw the distant fortifications of the enemy positions. Eerie music - Wagner? - was falling from the sky. In No Man's Land, steel monsters crawled. Above floated a leviathan of the air.
Again, Stalhein was high man. This time, he remained in his own shape and was detailed to the Attila.
The armoured gondola was a conclave of commanders, a nightmare of priorities eliciting a frenzy of salutes from the junior men of the airship service. The airship's captain was Peter Strasser, a fanatic for lighter-than-air flight who had carried out bombing raids on London early in the war. Outranking Strasser was Engineer Robur, director of the Imperial German Airship Service, the great designer of and propagandist for such devices. And outranking all was the Graf von Dracula, who stood alone, paces ahead of his black leather guards, looking at the mud- crawling battle through the observation ports. It was fortunate room had not been found for the Graf von Zeppelin, Field Marshal von Hindenburg and the Kaiser. The combined weight of their medals would have prevented the Attila from attaining operational altitude.
Everybody aboard the dirigible had precisely assigned duties, with the exceptions of Stalhein and the Graf von Dracula. Stalhein, feeling the cold of the height in his unshifted shape, had the sense he was being held back. JG1 would come into play soon.
From his chair, Strasser issued orders into a speaking-tube. His efficient crew scurried like uniformed monkeys through the fantastical arrangement of levers and struts.
A long shadow fell on the sunset-reddened land.
As befitted a craft of such magnificence, the Attila was equipped with a pipe organ. Robur sat at the keyboard, picking out themes from Lohengrin. The music was amplified through trumpets attached to the exterior of the ship.
Stalhein, with unaccustomed meekness, approached the observation port, a circular glass window three yards across set into the floor of the gondola. It was the eye of the Attila. The commander-in-chief of all the armies of the Vaterland stood, blunt hands resting on a brass rail, looking down on the battle. His face was grey in the artificial light, melancholy in aspect, slightly swollen. Stalhein had expected Dracula, the eternal warrior prince, to rejoice in the spilling of blood.
He had expected to feel more in the presence of the Graf. At one remove, Dracula was Stalhein's father-in-darkness. His bloodline, passed on through the elder Faustine, had given him shape-shifting aptitude. He was one of Dracula's creatures. Stalhein's blood did not sing. He did not feel compelled to kneel before his master. He joined Dracula at the port, and looked down.
There was light enough from the dying sun to see clearly. Formations of tanks crawled forwards, the first wave almost at the Entente trenches. Men advanced in their rutted wake. From this view, the troops were reduced to ants. The tanks seemed big beetles, ploughing through tiny obstacles. Bursts of flame burst throughout No Man's Land. This would be costly.
Spitting fire burst from the most advanced tanks, squirting liquid flame into the enemy trenches. Stalhein, though inured to fiery death, shuddered. This war prompted men of genius like Robur to develop weapons which could extinguish vampires as easily as gunfire and the sword killed warm men. Sections of the enemy trench system turned into rivers of fire, burning frontiers in the blackened map.
The Attila was over enemy territory, hovering above the range of anti-aircraft guns. Any heavy guns not yet overwhelmed would be occupied with the ground attack. There were no shells to spare for useless pot-shots.
A junior officer approached, terrified and awe-struck, and handed the Graf a note. He considered gravely and nodded. The officer waved an affirmation and Strasser gave orders into his tube.
Dark objects tumbled out of vents in the gondola, plunging to the ground. Mushrooming patterns of fire showed where the bombs burst. The Graf's eyes were balls of red, blood-blinded. His bloated face was lit by the fires below. He turned to Stalhein.
'God is with us,' Dracula said.
There were columns of fire all around. Kate realised how exposed she was on her mound. But, fascinated, she could not move. It was her job to be here, remember, to tell what she saw. She could not yet look away.
This was the German spring offensive, the Kaiserschlacht. Though everyone from Haig down to the dray-horses had known an attack was coming it had still taken the Allies by surprise.
As night fell, star-shells exploded above the trenches. The magnesium-flares of light stung her eyes. The land ironclads had advanced across the desert of wire and the dead, beating a path for the infantry.
'Who's that cretin up there?' someone shouted. Kate realised he meant her. 'Get his bloody head down before we have to pick it up in pieces.'
She was rugby-tackled by someone permeated with the smell of years of trench life, and dragged into a hole only half-filled with loose earth.
'It's a bint,' the soldier said.
His officer swore. Her Red Cross arm-band was slimed with mud. She wiped a swathe of grime away.
'She's a nurse, sir.'
'Bloody good for her, I say.'
'I think she's dead.'
Kate's fangs were poking out of her mouth. She felt her jaw distorting into a shark mouth.
'Bloody shame,' the officer commented.
'No, sir,' the soldier said. 'Not dead, dead. You know a vampire.'
This platoon was all warm. Some reg
iments insisted on living cannon fodder.
'You, Lady Bloodsucker,' the officer said, prodding her. He was elderly, about thirty. 'Are all your limbs working?'
'My name is Kate Reed. I'm whole.'
'Captain Penderel, at your service. You're conscripted.'
A spade was given to her. It had bloody handprints on it.
'See that earth there? Get stuck into it.'
Penderel's men shovelled away. The trench was blocked by an earthfall. Reinforcements, brought up from rear positions, were accumulating in the bottleneck. If the obstacle were breached, they could get into the fight. She saluted and started digging. Being a reporter was shame enough for her family; she would never tell them she'd worked as a navvy.
She hurled a spadeful of dirt over the top of the trench and stuck her shovel back into the packed, blasted earth. The blade struck something soft. A chunk fell from a face frozen into a dead scream. She flinched. Tommies pitched in, found the corpse's arms and pulled him out of the wall. The dead man came out in one piece. With a one and a two, the Tommies slung him into the air and out of the way, to fall where he might.
With the corpse gone, the barrier was greatly broken up. A man could scramble past it without sticking his tin hat over the top. Penderel approved the job and directed his men to advance. As he passed Kate, he saluted. She was left behind, still holding her shovel.
The Hun has broken through, all along the lines,' said Ginger. He was the Squadron's telegraph expert. 'It's pretty much a wash-out.'
From the field, Winthrop could tell the battle was intense. The sky over the trenches was burning. The massed screaming of guns and dying men carried over the few miles.
Every man in Condor Squadron was in flying kit. Every machine was out of the hangars and fuelled.
Over the battle hung a dark shape, its underside crimsoned. It was the Attila.
'It's a big gasbag, remember,' said Bertie. 'It'll burst in flames with a few incendiaries. Like a balloon.'
'It's a hundred times bigger than a balloon,' Allard reminded the pilot. 'It takes a big spark to set off such a firework.'